Creative Shift Quotes

I've been working in theater, really, since about 1965. I started working with the Mabou Mines about then, and in a way I've always worked in the theater, but it's never been a main part of my work. And it wasn't until Einstein that I kind of shifted into high gear with theater, working with Bob, with Bob Wilson. And since then I find it a very attractive form to work in. It's just an extension of my work.

I've moved on to Plan B now, writing novels.

'My Church' - that was really the tipping point of me going from songwriter to artist.

I became a melodic writer after 'Gunn.'

I felt I really wanted to back off from music completely and just work within the visual arts in some way. I started painting quite passionately at that time.

I used to draw and illustrate, but I don't do that anymore because I just like to write. I like to leave the illustrations to actual professional illustrators.

Moving to New York made all the difference in my creating this new series with Ellie Hatcher. I love Portland, and it's always going to be one of my favorite cities, but it was getting to the point where, after I'd moved to New York, I couldn't write as specifically about Portland any more.

I started out as a musician, and I ended up as a cartoon.

I was feeling really restless in my hard-rock band. I wanted to learn more about storytelling in music, and that's what country music is.

There's a few times in the past when I wrote a song, and I put the words together, and they were very clear pictures, and I felt like I was putting together a really good story. But I don't think I was ever really able to stay on that. What I've sort of developed lyrically is more about the sound of the vocals and what they are.

I used to paint a lot of oil and now I paint more mixed-media stuff.

When I started writing after my career as an actor, I knew that that other life in the film industry would be pulled into my writing life and that people would see me not as an author but as an actor starting to write.

I wrote my first album almost as an entitled child. 'Taxidermy' is written by a much more precarious, untrusting adult.

I don't know if I'd mastered that documentary format, but I wanted to move on from it.

I'm going to do a lot of weird stuff that's not going to be like me prancing around like an insane 12-year-old. I showed everybody that side of me and I think it's time to do different stuff, even when it comes down to the type of humor. I want to do some drier, weirder stuff.

As a kid I wanted to write science fiction, and I was never without a book. Later I really got into being a scientist and never thought I'd be writing novels.

I really liked them, not just Syd, but all of them. Roger was very important, I thought, his contribution. And so was Rick's organ playing. It was a good band. It became something else completely, obviously.

I suppose that Heartland, Unknown Soldier and Pride and Joy represent not a quieter side but more of a serious side to my work, something I've been getting into recently.

A lot of people change their band names because they're looking for a change of atmosphere.

Though direction remains my first love, I will certainly be a bit more serious about acting.

I don't paint anymore. I haven't since I abandoned it at 19, in order to begin writing seriously.

Here's the deal with 'Bastard.' I loved that show, and for me, it was such a palate cleanser, going from writing urban vernacular and crime to, essentially, iambic pentameter. I loved the mythology of that world based on history, but what it came down to was money.

I love writing, but I stopped because I felt I was more effective approaching filmmaking from a different vantage point.

I'm gonna try and change the course of hip hop again.

I had no intentions of going into sculpture but found that sculpture was just an extension of drawing.